Why don't politicians push for fossil fuel reduction by pointing out their scarcity?

Question

Fact A: Climate change is predominantly caused by fossil fuel usage (focusing only on what we humans control).

Fact B: Many people do not believe that climate change is an important issue.

Fact C: Fossil fuels are a limited resource. We will eventually run out.

In the United States, I see many politicians point out fact A but struggle to get any overwhelming support for such ideas from the American public, which has instead elected as its president a person who is described in fact B.

Why don't these politicians instead employ fact C which, unlike fact A, is obvious and uncontested across the political spectrum? After all, if people are told that fossil fuels are a limited ressource, the obvious response is that we must manage that ressource for the important aspects of our society. Then by managing that ressource, we accomplish the same thing that climate change prevention policies due: a limitation of our fossil fuel usage.

The only difference is that now we've accomplished it without making it about the climate. Rather, we're just doing something logical and rational: we have this thing that we all really like, and we're soon going to run out, so let's not use so much of it and also try to focus on what we might be able to substitute it with (aka renewable energy).

I think anybody, no matter their views on the climate, would think that's a reasonable way to go about it. So why don't US politicians talk about this aspect more?

Answer 1

The issue used to be popular in '70s. Not only there had been an artificial oil scarcity caused by OPEC cartel but also there had been a famous book The Limits to Growth that were based on best computer models of that era, finite amount of resources and exponential growth. The problem is, that if one took their calculation at face value, then we should have run out of most resources somewhere in '90s. (Yes, I know, right now fans of that book claim that's misinterpretation did by some evil rightwingers, nevertheless, that's exactly the conclusion that one should reach by adding number of years of resources left to book publication year).

Technically claims A, B and C are correct. However there is catch - apparently we are nowhere near actual end of those resources. The problem is that stone age haven't end because of lack of stone, neither transition from coal to oil has not been caused by scarcity of coal. The thing that people usually miss is:

• we discover new resources all the time, especially when price justifies prospecting efforts (known reserves of oil are not only nominally higher that they had been a few decades ago, they are even higher in years of annual consumption left)
• technology at exploring gets better
• merely price shift could change amount of resources (Canada is an oil rich country when the price is high enough to justify squeezing oil out of tar sands)

You know what would be the answer for "resource scarcity argument"? If they are indeed as scarce as claimed, then soon the issue would solve itself - scarcity purely by market forces would cause long term resource price to dramatically increase. Relative price would make renewables highly competitive and with no government intervention they would be embraced by markets. Relax, assuming that scarcity is a serious issue, then anthropogenic climate change is about to stabilise. Government intervention would not help much, it would be at best taking credit for market driven process or even worse distorting market and artificially picking winners (solar vs. wind vs. biomass; storage vs. long distance transfer). Yes, I know it would be an oversimplification and some R&D government spending would make sense under such assumption, but I'm simply saying which argument could be used to counter.

Setting this aside IPCC models for CO2 emission are based on assumption that we have more than enough of fossil fuels for next century. Also long term contracts (10 years) for oil show that markets also expect abundant and inexpensive oil in future.

Answer 2

Because nobody would pay any attention. There are huge amounts of coal left – the World Coal Association says that currently proven reserves amount to 150 years' worth at current levels of extraction. People have been saying since the 1970s or earlier that we'll run out of oil and natural gas in a couple of decades, but we've always found more. Any politician who starts talking about running out of oil will be ignored as crying wolf.

Answer 3

This would be too weak an argument.

According to climate science (e.g. this paper from 2015 in Nature, endorced by UNFCCC), to preserve a 50% chance to keep global warming under 2°C compare to pre-indutrial era, we need to dig and burn much less than the remaining known fossil fuel ressources. This means that the political resolve to limit our consumption must be much stronger than the physical limit of the ressources.

Actually, about 82% of the carbon contained in the fossil fuels underground should never be released in the atmosphere. Limiting coal extraction is the main target, but a lot of natural gas and oil will also need to be left untouched.

That's why many movements develop around the motto "Leave it in the ground". Several governments already made commitments in that respect, in spite of serious economical pressure.

Saying something like "let's slow down consumption so that we can use the existing resources during the next century instead of the next 30 years", even if it was heard, would leave us very far from the necessary effort to keep a sustainable climate on an inhabitable Earth.

TL;DR

Quoting Peter A. Schneider in a comment:

The necessary course of action can not be supported by a resource scarcity argument because the required action is to stop burning carbon long before scarcity becomes even a remote issue.

Answer 4

Because your "Fact C" is not a fact on the timescale of the human lifespan. No one has any idea how many years of fossil fuel reserves are left, because new reserves get discovered, and new extraction techniques get invented or become economically viable.

From Our World in Data (a collaboration between the University of Oxford and the non-profit Global Data Change lab):

To give a static indicative estimate of how long we could feasibly consume fossil fuels for, we have plotted the Reserves-to-Production (R/P) ratio for coal, oil and gas based on 2015 figures below. The R/P ratio essentially divides the quantity of known fuel reserves by the current rate of production to estimate how long we could continue if this level of production remained constant. Based on BP's Statistical Review of World Energy 2016, we'd have about 115 years of coal production, and roughly 50 years of both oil and natural gas remaining.6 Again, these figures are only useful as a static measure; they will continue to vary with time as our capacity to economically source and extract fossil fuels changes, and our levels of consumption rise or fall.

(emphasis mine)

Even if current estimates with known reserves and extraction techniques were accurate (below), we're looking at at least 50 years of both coal+oil+methane. This is plenty long to last the rest of US republican representatives' lifetimes. So, your fact c is not a fact on timescales short enough for immoral politicians to care about.

Answer 5

Partially, because - at least for oil - argument C has been overused and therefore is powerless now (with anyone over 30).

In the 70s+ it was a widely known fact AND predictions were to run out well before the 2000s. Then before the 2010s. Then the 2020s. And now we're here and there's still enough oil for now.

That's why the argument is powerless: it has been overused, the boy cried "wolf" too many times.

With young people who didn't experience the "the oil is running out"-mentality its still a valid argument, but anyone who (even just from their parents) heard of the scare is basically "immune" to that line of reasoning

Answer 6

Another problem is that the argument is not a good argument for the corner cases:

1.:

Assume all Oil and Coal is used up in five years if we don't drastically reduce our consumption:

1. Forcing people to use less resources worldwide in less than five years is almost impossible
2. waiting five years until everything is used up is easy and is a great solution to stop CO2 emissions

So this argument is very weak to support the need to reduce fossil fuel usage.

Of course you say five years is too unrealistic. So try that argument with more years:

2.:

Assume all Oil and Coal is used up in 100 years if we don't drastically reduce our consumption:

1. 100 years is very far in the future, no one will really care about the difference between "doesn't run out" and "runs out in 100 years".

2. you have to make the same arguments now for "runs out in 100 years" and "doesn't run out"

This argument is also very weak.

Of course now you say in reality the fossil fuels also don't run out in 100 years.

But you have a argument that is very weak on both ends of the scale. Trying to find a middle ground where the mix of this two weak arguments magically becomes a strong argument will not be possible.

Answer 7

Another problem with this argument by limited resource...it's not as limited or as un-renewable as implied.

What's the difference between fossil fuels and bio-fuels... predominately age. Artificial diamonds vs real diamonds...molecularly the same but one is compressed and formed in a shorter time span.

Arguably, certain regions of the world have more plant matter than they once did (albeit others have less) and presumably the combined animal and human mass is greater than it's ever been thanks to crop and resource cultivation and improved efficiencies. But if there's more plant, animal, and human (all read together as living bio-mass) today than before, this also implies each year there is a greater amount of dying/dead bio-mass than before. That bio-mass converts partially into new fossil fuels.

Therefore, fossil fuels will be present even after there is no civilization or life of any kind left on the planet (unless everything burns at the same time).

Answer 8

Affordability

Whilst other answers address whether or not the scarcity argument is valid, even if it was, for example, one country dependent on an external source of fuel from another country that could cut them off, one of the key hurdles to switching to renewables is cost to the taxpayer.

Whilst wind power prices are falling, storage costs are dropping at a slower rate, and for example, in the US, according to Fortune's infrastructure costs chart, US electricity grid needs at least nearly $1 trillion to maintain (and it's underfunded) and overhauling a massive antiquated energy grid infrastructure to add renewables and storage, and bring it up to scratch, would likely cost trillions more. This is all whilst the US has already clocked nearly $22 trillion dollars worth of debt. (It's worth noting other countries, like the UK and France are similarly in-debt).

Even if most people agree renewables are a long-term solution, finding a suitable funding source for that solution is a key problem. Wage buying power is down (with it's peak 50 years ago), and any downward tax pressure on middle or lower classes would likely force already impoverished families into dire straits, and you can't simply tax the rich either - corporations and rich individuals hire accountants to make full use of tax loopholes and off-shore accounts, and if they aren't able to, businesses often flee higher taxation areas for lower taxation areas, for example, a lot of American businesses setup their HQs in the Republic of Ireland to take advantage of it's lower tax rate.

With many second-hand petrol cars readily available on the cheap, and renewable technology still relatively expensive (at least for the average person to readily afford), there is not much financial drive to switch from fuels to renewables, even if logically it makes sense.

Answer 9

Then there is the "replace with what" argument

Electric cars are not as efficient as petroleum cars in terms of mileage. This is a problem for nations like the United States, as there are portions of it that are rather far from major population centers or Urban development. In fact, just about any state that doesn't have access to the ocean is not very densely populated, and the ones that do still have pockets where the nearest store is 10 minutes by car... the greater range of the petrol engine is still desirable to people living in these areas (to say nothing of Lithium batteries losing charge over repeated recharges... which is basically saying that not only is the electric car not as range efficient, but now you also lose space in your fuel tank every time you fuel up. Americans historically prefer reliablity in their cars (i.e. how likely is it to break down) above all else.

Solving that issue also doesn't solve the pollution issue as fossil fuels are still more cost efficient for providing power. All an electric car only market does is move the pollution of fossil fuels to the power plants only. Green Energy (solar, wind, hydro) is not as efficient to compete on the market with Fossil Fuels just yet. The only one with a higher efficiency I am hesitant to describe as a green energy: Nuclear Energy... which is much more controversial as it's only green while it's working... if a fossil fuel energy plant catastrophically fails, the environmental impact is preferable to a catastrophic nuclear power failure. Chernobyl, one of the worst nuclear disasters ever, was so bad it the clean up costs led in part to the collapse of the Soviet Union. (also, nuclear fuel isn't renewable... it's just releases more energy for longer per equivalent fuel.).

The problem with this question isn't that there are only so much fossil fuel resources, but that the tech to replace fossil fuels is not yet efficient enough to make the customer base switch off fossil fuels. And it isn't like there isn't a governmental need for renewable fuel. The U.S. Military is highly dependent on a massive fuel consumption and has a massive R&D budget (and the list of consumer products that first were developed by the U.S. military R&D is quite staggering). And the U.S. has historically preferred to fight wars as dirty as possible (as Patton famously told his troops, No U.S. soldier should see the job as dying for their nation, but rather making enemy troops die for their nation). Thus they put a lot of money into any edge they can get over the enemy. Shortages of needed supplies at the front is something they would no doubt like to eliminate from their fighting machine, and tanks are gas guzzlers of the highest order... it would be far nicer if we could drive a tank without it going bingo on the battle field while the enemy worries about getting oil to their tanks.